Disability in Brandon's Books - [Spoilers All]

[Claincy he/him]

I've been thinking for some time about the presentation of disability and chronic pain in Brandon's novels. I've been rereading a number of his books to refresh my memory on some of the details as well and I ended up with a lot of thoughts. I've written him a letter trying to provide some insight and I think it's a topic worth discussing here as well. Fair warning: it's kind of...long. But I think it needed to be to really unpack and explain what I wanted to talk about.

Spoiler Warning: The letter includes direct spoilers for Mistborn, Stormlight, Elantris, Warbreaker and Reckoners. But other books are relevant to the topic as well. If you haven't read some of Brandon's books and are concerned about spoilers this is not a safe thread to read.

Spoiler

Dear Brandon,

I want to start by saying how much I love your work, how much your books and characters have meant to me, and how your books have had a large part in developing my own interest in writing. I would also like to say how much I appreciate the care and quality with which you’ve written mental illness with characters like Kaladin, and neurodivergence with characters like Steris (who is simply wonderful). With all that in mind, your treatment of physically disabled characters and characters with chronic pain could be improved on. I have no doubt that you are capable of handling those topics just as well as you handle mental illness and I hope I can help you understand why you aren’t currently hitting that mark. I’ll try to be concise, but there’s a lot to unpack. Before I do I would like to note that I appreciate that there are a moderate number of disabled characters across your books. Some fall into some of the unhelpful tropes and others are largely minor characters, but I do still appreciate their presence. (I’ll mostly talk about disability in general but I’ll touch on chronic pain specifically at the end.) I want to be clear that this isn’t intended as a harsh criticism but as an explanation of something you might not have realised.

(To provide some quick context for my perspective. I have chronic pain and chronic fatigue, severe enough that I am barely able to work a couple of hours in a week at the best of times, frequently less. My head started hurting 7 years ago now and has continued to be painful literally every waking moment since then. We really have no idea why. Two other members of my immediate family have chronic fatigue syndrome and my aunt has fibromyalgia.)

The presentation of disability in fiction is typically poor. It is usually written based on ideas that people without experience of disability have without any real understanding of what being disabled is actually like. The general representation of disability in fiction is more of a fantasy version of disability for non-disabled people to enjoy. There are exceptions that are written well, of course. But the majority are not. Unfortunately the tropes and issues common in these stories can be harmful; setting unreasonable and harmful expectations and actually making people less understanding of disabled people. I’d like to talk about a few of these, but I’ll focus first on the one most common in your writing.

1) Magical healing & “Overcoming” disability. Allow me to present a scenario for you. Imagine that, at some point during the climax of Bands of Mourning, Steris holds and uses the bands. In doing so she taps an immense amount of zinc and copper, processing a huge array of memories from a vast variety of people in a matter of moments. This experience grants her a more intuitive understanding of people and effectively cures her autism. That would, of course, be an awful thing to write, even thinking about it as an example is painful. Let’s take another example. What if, when Kaladin achieved the 3rd ideal of the Windrunnders it cured his depression, and similarly if Teft were cured of his addiction. Not quite as bad as ‘curing autism’, but still pretty bad. You took care to make it clear that this wasn’t at all the case.

I expect you can tell where I’m going with this. Magically curing physical disability may seem to make ‘more sense’ as an aspect of the magic, but only because that is how you wrote the magic in the first place. It’s just as problematic as magically curing mental illness. Unfortunately this is rather common in the Cosmere, as it is in most media. Lopen, Renarin, (Gaz I expect), Susebron, all of Elantris, Spook (arguably). (I may well be forgetting others, but you get the point.) Renarin in particular is such a cool character in exactly the right setting to explore his experience as the son of a highprince in a warrior culture, who can’t fight due to his disability. But he gets magically cured. We don’t even get a viewpoint from him until after that. I can see why you wrote him that way and the secrets you couldn’t reveal too soon, but it is still quite disappointing.

It is also extremely common for disabled characters in fiction that, when push comes to shove, they can push through their disability through sheer force of will to accomplish something that they’ve been established to be physically incapable of. “Overcoming” their disability. Thereafter they are also usually cured, or at the least their life becomes a lot easier. So the typical narrative is that by virtue of character growth they overcome their disability. As an occasional story this would be fine, but as a common trope it’s actually quite harmful. I’ll try to break down why and provide a little more insight on what living with disability is actually like.

• This is a non-disabled fantasy, it doesn’t reflect our existence nor is it necessarily that enjoyable for us to watch or read. Generally speaking we want to watch characters who struggle like us. Have some success, and continue to struggle. Because that’s how life is.
• This overcoming disability or achieving amazing things despite it is commonly referred to as disabled “inspiration porn”. Stories that motivate non-disabled people. Because if someone like that can accomplish something so great, why can’t you? I think when spelled out it’s fairly clear how dehumanising that can be.
• A common thing we are told by non-disabled people is to not let ourselves be ‘defined’ by our disability. But my disability impacts every single aspect of my life. Of course it is part of what defines me, pretending otherwise will only make things worse. Another common comment is about how ‘brave’ we are. Which sounds nice, but it’s not like we chose this. That kind of thinking often leads to comments like “I couldn’t live like that.” That isn’t a compliment. It’s someone saying they think the disabled person would be better off dead. Given the number of disabled people who are murdered by their carers to ‘put them out of their suffering’ that kind of sentiment literally gets disabled people killed.
• If disability can be overcome by, in essence, being good enough or trying hard enough. Then by extension those who haven’t overcome their disability mustn’t have tried hard enough. Mustn’t be good enough. So in a way it’s their own fault, right? This is of course ridiculous. Most people don’t hold this opinion directly of course (though some people certainly do and violence and abuse towards disabled people is a serious issue). However if something is reinforced constantly by the media you consume it can and will create an unconscious bias unless you’re aware of it and wary of that possibility. It’s so easy to ask someone “Well why haven’t you tried X treatment yet?” or “It can’t hurt to try X.” (It can, and often does.) If they just tried that they might be better right? So maybe they’re just lazy and it’s a little bit their own fault.

I appreciated that in Calamity the harmsways can't heal Knighthawk and from what I understand of how healing works in the Cosmere it could be the same there. As I understand it Cosmere healing restores your body to it’s normal state, a spiritual blueprint as such. With that in mind it would be quite reasonable to say that a condition from birth couldn’t be healed. Or for that matter, any injury that had become a sufficiently ingrained part of their identity. So the option is there even for characters with powerful magic. I think the precedent is already there in Edgedancer with the children the Stump can and can’t heal.

As a quick aside. I’ve been watching your BYU lectures online this year. (Which are very enjoyable and instructive by the way.) In lecture 9 you talked about flaws, handicaps and limitations. In that you described a handicap as “..something that must be overcome, absolutely must be overcome, but is something that is not the character’s fault. And they have no power over whether this thing can be changed. Now some handicaps through the course of the story will be evaporated by the story. But the point is, the character up to this point, you don’t blame a character for being born blind. This is a handicap, and you frame the story a very different way.”

You then describe “A limitation, for me, is a thing that is not to change, not to even overcome. It is a constraint you work within that you don't necessarily want the character to overcome.”

Your intentions are good, of course. And you could look at learning to live with a disability and work around it to an extent as partially overcoming it, in a sense. However, by placing disability in the list of things that must be overcome in the first place you’re setting yourself up to make the same kind of mistakes repeatedly. Physical disability is much better thought of as a limitation that cannot be changed (and frankly should not be changed in most stories).

2) It is more common than it should be for disabled characters to nobly sacrifice themselves. Thereby ‘proving’ that they can still be ‘valuable’ despite their disability. I don’t think I need to say more to explain how that can be unhelpful. I don't think you've ever really done this. I should also make note of the idea of disabled individuals being a ‘burden’. Many disabled people struggle with feeling like a burden at some point in their lives. As you can doubtless imagine this is a really unhealthy mindset, but a common struggle nonetheless. The other side of this is other people viewing them as a burden which leads to a lot of mistreatment, emotional manipulation and abuse on a personal level. Not to mention inaccessibility and lack of support on more systemic levels throughout society. Much of that struggle with feeling like a burden comes about specifically because of others in their lives, and society at large, treating them as such. You can absolutely write about disabled characters struggling with this. It’s very real and relatable. But please make it clear that it’s not true; without resorting to noble sacrifice or remarkable achievements.

3) It is also reasonably common for disabled characters to be killed or hurt to motivate the protagonist. Or to show how evil the villain is. This isn’t common in your work but there is one slightly atypical example I want to make mention of. I like Ashweather Cett in Mistborn era 1. He’s a cool character. But the only time his disability matters or influences anything is to reinforce to Vin that she’s going overboard when she raids his keep. Him being a cripple feels like it’s as much there for Vin’s character as it is for him. It’s not awful by any means, but it’s not ideal either. To briefly note, the only other disabled characters in era 1 are Clubs and arguably, in a way, Spook. Clubs’s limp is mostly just character flavour, it’s fine, just unremarkable. Spook could be looked at as having chronic pain via hypersensitivity. But it’s much more a super power and it’s cured by the end anyway.

4) Disabled villains are unreasonably common in fiction. More common than protagonists. Often they were driven to villainy and callous evil by their disability. Again, I don’t think I need to explain why that’s problematic as a trope. (Though I will note that while disability and chronic pain can make people desperate, in my experience it also more often than not makes them more empathic, not less.) This is a trope you have mostly avoided in your writing, with one unfortunate exception. Professor Irich is the only significantly disabled character in Mistborn era 2 and the only character I can think of with chronic pain you’ve written since Elantris. We really, really, didn’t need a viewpoint of him showing how utterly immoral and hateful he was.

Far too many disabled characters end up in one of these situations/filling one of these tropes. (It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, but some of the most common.)  Any of them are fine individually of course. We could and should have stories with disabled villains and with disabled characters who die or recover. The problem is in how extensive these tropes are. It is very rare to find a major character who lives and struggles with their disability and continues to do so as the story ends. But that’s what disability is like for the majority of us. I will take a moment to note that of the disabled characters in Stormlight, the ones who are left anyway, Rysn has strong potential. We’ve only had the one viewpoint from her since she was crippled so far, but it was a good start. And frankly 1 viewpoint puts her ahead of almost every other disabled character in the Cosmere. What I mean to say is, I’m looking forward to her novella. (And if you haven’t already done so I’d advise having some frank conversations with people who have been similarly crippled to help you finish writing that.)

I really hope this isn’t coming across too negatively. I love your books and I’m not seeking to criticise as much as to provide some insight.

Alright. Time to talk briefly about chronic pain and Elantris. I don’t want to dwell on Elantris too much, it was after all your first published novel and your writing has progressed massively since then. (And Elantris was still generally pretty good.) However, I think it’s necessary to touch on it for this discussion. Elantris is a book in which people who get a particularly unpleasant chronic illness/pains are thrown into a crumbling, walled off city to suffer where society can try to pretend they don’t exist. Any who try to escape are permanently injured and any who try more than a couple of times are burnt alive. They’re also the target of extreme hate for political benefit. That’s one heck of a premise. And one that is horrifyingly close to the reality in many places. But the book isn’t about that, nor does it do that premise justice. In fairness; I would be hugely impressed if you had managed to do justice to a premise like that in your first published novel.

The concept of being in pain constantly, that gets worse repeatedly, is presented as a fun fantasy concept. I have a feeling you didn’t realise at the time how close to reality that experience is. (I didn’t either when I first read it, that was sometime before I got sick.) Unsurprisingly the resulting depiction of chronic pain is hit and miss. I’m not going to try to go into detail on that here as this is already overly long and everyone’s experience with disability & chronic pain is different anyway. It’s definitely best to talk to people who have similar disability & pain to the character you’re writing.

If you read through all that, thankyou for listening. I hope it provided a little insight. I’m really looking forward to Rhythm of War, which I’m sure will be outstanding as usual.

Sincerely,
[Claincy]

 

[Lunamor she/her]

Thank you for writing this! While I am not sure if my health problems are severe enough for me to call myself disabled (the term seems to have a quite wide definition), I do struggle with chronic pain and fatigue. I agree with what you said in your letter, especially the part about how people say that you shouldn't let your disabilities define you. I would likely be a very different person without the restraints I have, and having had them since birth they are just a part of what I am. My hatred of that fact doesn't do anything to make it untrue. I also agree with how frustrating it is when people suggest doing extra treatments and then think you to be lazy for not trying them- in my case, it is very easy to do more harm than good. While I admire Brandon for his incredible depictions of things like class inequality and mental health, I hope that he reads this letter and can improve upon his writing when it comes to stuff like this.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Lunamor

[ConfusedCow]

Best wishes for your health.  Your letter ranged quite a bit.  If you could make one addition or change to Brandon's work, alter one character arc, what would it be?  Where do you think he does the best and the worst?

[NattyBo]

I absolutely agree with the content/theme of your letter to Brandon.  

 

Full disclosure: I struggle with depression/anxiety, but I find Brandon's presentation of physical disability more irksome in some way I cant quite define. It didn't hit me until my wife mentioned it after the Bridge 4 miraculous healings - because her Dad, who recently passed away, was wheelchair bound and effectively a quadriplegic for the last ~20 years of his life. It was clear to me that in some way that description of the process, the feelings of the physical disability being healed, etc, were kind of hurtful to her.  Again, I'm not doing a great job expressing myself here, but I do think the OP has a valid point, and I'm also in agreement that Rysn is by far the best written disabled character Brandon has yet included.

[Karger he/him]

9 hours ago, Claincy said:

But he gets magically cured

I do not think so actually.  He mentions not having one for a while but that could be just because they don't come regularly.  I can't find the quote but I don't think he is cured.

Other then that I thought your letter was excellent.  Best wishes.

 

[datalaughing he/him]

I feel like this is a strange area. Because we know Cosmere healing relies on Identity, how you perceive yourself. Hobber lost the use of his legs, but deep down inside he still pictured himself as being someone with 2 working legs. So he was able to heal that. If enough time had passed for him to self-identify as a person without working legs, he wouldn't have been able to heal them, like Kaladin or Kelsier's scars. 

So where do you draw the line between injury and disability? What is it ok to heal and what is considered not ok? If someone chops The Lord Ruler's arm off, and he immediately heals it, he never had the time to even experience it as an inconvenience, let alone a disability. So does that make it cool? Why do Lopen and Spook fall into, "disabled" rather than, "injured." And who gets to make that call? In the Cosmere it's apparently up to each individual character to identify what parts are part of their own Identity to determine what can/can't be healed. 

[Claincy he/him]

@Lunamor Thanks. Sorry you have to deal with that. (I have no idea where you could reasonably draw a boundary on what counts as disabled, nor would I care to try. It's definitely a very broad spectrum. Just from what you said I reckon it could apply to you if you wanted.)

@ConfusedCow Thanks. I'd like less magical healing, mostly

S: stormlight/mistborn

Spoiler

But if I was going to say one thing I'd rather was different it'd be Renarin still having to deal with epilepsy.
Secondarily Irich not being disabled. He's definitely the worst bit of disability representation in Brandon's work imo.

@NattyBo Hope your going ok. Depression and anxiety are nasty. 

@Karger If you're right and I'm wrong, I'll be happy.

S: stormlight

Spoiler

I think he probably would've shown some sign of it at some point during Oathbringer. It seems a long time to go without it presenting at all, based on how it was established in the previous books. It didn't hinder him at all in the final battle, though that could be more an exception than the rule. I think he's just uncertain if it'll still be an issue or not. If it does turn out that he's not cured I'll still be a little disappointed it didn't show up at all in Oathbringer, but happy overall.

@datalaughing Yeah there isn't a clear cut answer, just case by case. Some would, some wouldn't. And I'd be happy with that. I'd forgotten about Kaladin's brand. That is an excellent example.

 

[AonEne he/him in an enby way]

This letter was a very good read, and good education on ableist tropes that I didn’t realize I was reading. Brandon is the type to seek out opinions from groups he is writing to be as accurate as possible, from what I’ve seen, so I think there’s a good likelihood that this will make him reconsider accidentally following these tropes. It definitely made me think. 

Have a good day  

[thegatorgirl00 she/her]

This post was really good @Claincy. Since yo didn't mention it in your letter, I assume you haven't read Defending Elysium? It has a disabled main character, and I would love to know you opinions on how it was handled there. It's super short and free on Brandon's site.

[Claincy he/him]

@AonEne Thanks. Yeah I'm hopeful. I really think the main reason he hasn't done better so far is that he didn't realise he wasn't hitting the same mark he was with other groups.

 

@thegatorgirl00 I have read Defending Elysium. But I forgot about it when I was writing the letter. Which is silly, because I reread it relatively recently. :/ Ah well. Defending Elysium is a more complicated and interesting one. I think there'd be more varied opinions from different disabled people on it. I reread it again today to try and sort out what I thought of it.

I can't speak for the presentation of blindness with the 'fear of the darkness' thing with any conviction. I really don't know how well that would or wouldn't resonate with someone who'd lost their sight. I'm not very knowledgeable in that regard. Though it's worth noting that the majority of people who are legally blind still have some vision. I'm not sure what someone with partial vision might think of it relative to someone with no vision. Or someone born blind vs someone who became blind. So basically that was a lot of words to say "I really don't know" about the specific case.

I can talk a little more generally though. Disabled people with super powers? More please! Disabled people with super powers that directly replace/remove the limitations of their disability? Ehh, it depends. It mostly depends on the limitations and what the author does with it. In this case, replacing sight with what is essentially a better sight isn't as interesting to me. His Sense doesn't have a lot of downsides and has fewer limitations than regular sight. It can be suppressed, sure. But you can suppress someone's sight with darkness or a blindfold (or overly bright light for that matter), suppressing Cytonics is much harder by comparison. I still like Defending Elysium and I don't dislike Jason being blind or anything, but it doesn't stand out to me personally as an especially praiseworthy representation of disability. Jason's experience just seems too separate from normal blindness.

I think generally I prefer if a character's super powers don't directly replace their disability, or if there are more significant limitations around its use. It makes for more interesting story telling for one thing. But it's also a lot closer to reality, and you aren't going to end up with a character who is technically disabled but it doesn't really effect them much. I don't have a strong idea what most disabled people think along these lines, so I'm just speaking for myself here.

I think a solid real-world example is actually a wheelchair. I know a lot of people who don't need a wheelchair see them as something scary, afraid of being 'confined to a wheelchair'. But that's not the reality at all. To someone who needs one, whether they can walk a little or not at all, a wheelchair is great. It's a mobility aid that can really make a big difference in their life and allow them to be a lot more independent. It does have it's own limitations, of course. A lot of places aren't properly accessible for wheelchairs, plenty of terrain isn't easy to traverse in one, (some strangers like to 'help' push you around even when you tell them not to), etc. You're still better off thinking of them as super-powers for some disabled people than as a bad thing to be 'stuck' having to use.

[Draginon he/him]

It would be interesting if Brandon wrote in a few characters where their disability or mental illness does weird things to the investiture they use. Like imagine a Windrunner with a phobia to heights, a Truthwatcher where telling the truth would mentally destroy them because the trauma connected to it is too much to handle, someone with a case of multiple personality disorder where the investiture makes it worse by literally making it a case of two minds in one person where one can do magic but the other doesn’t because the healing factor would split the personalities apart, someone with a abused past where they can’t use magic to hurt others and that’s the only magic they can use or even an Elantrian who suffers seizures or is armless and can’t draw the Aons.

There could be others for ones like blindness being counterproductive for a magic that requires sight or a magic that requires movement but it doesn’t count wheelchairs or other methods for transportation for whatever reason.

[AonEne he/him in an enby way]

22 hours ago, Draginon said:

Like imagine a Windrunner with a phobia to heights...

There's actually a member of Bridge Four who is this, though Brandon hasn't really given him a character yet. Maybe he'll get a viewpoint in the future, though.

[Rushu42 she/her]

@Claincy Thanks so much for writing this letter. It really opened my eyes to some issues that I hadn't known much about before. It also made me take a second look at some characters I've written - I fear that I haven't really done their disabilities justice. I wanted to explore how people see the world differently, but now I'm worried that I don't have broad enough experience to accurately portray their viewpoints. I'd hate to be accidentally promoting ableist views. Would anyone have any advice on writing a deaf character? I gave her a superpower which does cancel out some of the difficulties of being deaf, which I realize now was a mistake. I hope to be able to write her better in the future, as well as making my other characters more accurate.

[Claincy he/him]

@Rushu42 I don't mean to discourage you from writing disabled characters by any means. I'd much rather authors included disabled characters and did well sometimes and poorly others, than not write them at all.  Even just keeping in mind the major points I mentioned would set you above average.

I can't give you any specific advise on writing a deaf character (or most other disabilities for that matter). My own knowledge is fairly limited past my own experience and I don't want to speak for others' experiences outside of some common tropes/issues. I would say that, speaking generally, a superpower that cancels out some of the difficulties of being deaf isn't necessarily bad. I think it could be good, bad or neutral all depending on the details of how it works, limitations, character and story. But you'd really need to talk with some deaf/hard of hearing folks to get a real idea of what is and isn't helpful.

There are people who specifically do consulting/sensitivity reading for disability in media (and for other minorities). If you are able to, consulting with them might really help. They ought to have a much broader and deeper understanding and be better practiced at providing useful insight. You could also probably learn a lot from blogs/articles/social media written by disabled people, or through conversations with disabled people you know or meet.

[Scriptorian he/him]

Good discussion here.
I’m currently writing a book where the magic system is directly linked to the characters’ disabilities. So, needless to say, I am very interested in discussions of disabilities in fiction, especially when they mingle with magic systems.
The basic premise of my magic system is that every character with a power has some kind of associated psychological/neurological disability. In-universe, they aren’t sure if the powers cause the disability, or if a preexisting disability is what let’s you develope powers (read and find out  ). Regardless, all powers have the built-in drawback of supernaturally aggravating one’s disability when overused. Also, the powers and disabilities tend to be thematically linked. This leads to interesting interactions.
The general rule I’m operating under is that while some characters can sidestep their disability through use of their power, it’s usually short-term and there’s always a cost. For example, one character can manipulate sound but has aural hypersensitivity. He can theoretically avoid his usual problems with sensory overload by lowering the volume of all sound around him, but doing so leaves him even more sensitive afterwards.
Things get even more sticky when different people’s powers start interacting with each other (like, for example, someone who can manipulate emotions meets someone with depression). So I’m having a fun time trying to allow characters to develop organically, and the magic system to interact realistically with their disabilities, all while maintaining sensitivity to real peoples’ experiences.
I’m also planning a deconstruction of what happens when a character's life-long disability does get essentially resolved by the magic system. (Spoiler alert: there will be angst)

TLDR: if my book ever gets close to publishing, I’m going to need all the sensitivity readers. (I'm almost halfway through the first draft. Woot.)

Edited July 10, 2020 by Scriptorian
Why did I type this on my phone?

[Kain]

On 23. 6. 2020 at 5:53 PM, datalaughing said:

I feel like this is a strange area. Because we know Cosmere healing relies on Identity, how you perceive yourself. Hobber lost the use of his legs, but deep down inside he still pictured himself as being someone with 2 working legs. So he was able to heal that. If enough time had passed for him to self-identify as a person without working legs, he wouldn't have been able to heal them, like Kaladin or Kelsier's scars. 

So where do you draw the line between injury and disability? What is it ok to heal and what is considered not ok? If someone chops The Lord Ruler's arm off, and he immediately heals it, he never had the time to even experience it as an inconvenience, let alone a disability. So does that make it cool? Why do Lopen and Spook fall into, "disabled" rather than, "injured." And who gets to make that call? In the Cosmere it's apparently up to each individual character to identify what parts are part of their own Identity to determine what can/can't be healed. 

Brandon needs a stamp of approval given by "disabled community" represented through COF - Committee of Disability. Of course the structure of zie Committee is highly branched and operating under strict tenets of Intersectionality and Critical theory. As result it can avoid devastating injustices such as non-mute disabled person making decisions in case of mute character written by non-disabled author.

Claincy can you offer your insight on the Immortal Words and how do they impact a mute reader?

[Claincy he/him]

On 7/19/2020 at 6:28 AM, Kain said:

Brandon needs a stamp of approval given by "disabled community" represented through COF - Committee of Disability. Of course the structure of zie Committee is highly branched and operating under strict tenets of Intersectionality and Critical theory. As result it can avoid devastating injustices such as non-mute disabled person making decisions in case of mute character written by non-disabled author.

Claincy can you offer your insight on the Immortal Words and how do they impact a mute reader?

I'm not sure I'm understanding you properly sorry. Are you asking if a mute or nonspeaking person would be able to swear radiant oaths? If so, I'm reasonably sure that they can. It seems that the acceptance of the oath is more important than actually speaking it. Saying the words without embracing the meaning doesn't accomplish anything.

Oathbringer:

Spoiler

Lopen speaking the oath counts when it does and not before because he's "ready", he's internalised it.

Edgedancer:

Spoiler

Lift is able to summon Wyndle as shardblade (as such) when she accepts the oath, immediately before she says the words out loud.

It is quite possible that to seal the oath properly requires communicating the oath in some way. But if so I expect that could be accomplished through written language, sign language or other means.

 

@Scriptorian That sounds pretty cool to me. So long as the author writing it was taking care to handle the topics seriously/get sensitivity reading. Which it sounds like you are.

[Singer she/her]

I am sure Brandon would be very interested in reading your letter Claincy! It is wonderfully written and brings up some great points. As someone who has experienced depression, I appreciate a good depiction and you definitely deserve to see some quality representation! Thanks for sharing with the rest of us. Ableism is something I've been trying to become more aware of. Honestly, having kids has opened my eyes to a lot of it. Through pregnancy I have near constant nausea, migraines, and fatigue. It just changes how I need to do things day to day. I know I would be extremely hurt if someone thought that I should be able to just "power through" feeling sick all the time and get over it. Taking a heavy stroller everywhere has certainly opened my eyes to how poor accessibility is for wheelchairs...let's just say I (and the world in general) have a long way to go in understanding the needs and experiences of people of all walks of life!

[Claincy he/him]

Exciting update time: I finally gathered the nerve and energy to share the letter on the Brandon subreddit as well. There's a bunch of thoughtful discussion in the thread. And Brandon responded! It's probably best to read the posts with the context of what he was directly replying to, but I'll drop the text here as well for anyone who doesn't want to visit reddit.

1st response

Quote

Hey, thanks for the tag. And also /u/LatteCat234. This is the perfect post I needed to be tagged on. You two are great.

/u/Claincy I've read this, and will keep it pinned. This is exactly the kind of feedback that is useful for writers to hear. I try to do the best I can, but I can always do better. I particularly like how you outlined some of the traps/tropes authors fall into, because those are exactly the things that are super helpful for me to read. (And similar lists have helped me a lot with my writing in other areas.)

I don't want to say much more than that, because I don't want to imply your perspective is invalid. (It most certainly is.) But I do want to mention that I pay a lot of attention this kind of issue, and there is a fine line to walk. Many things having to do with disability have a bit controversy surrounding them similar to the cochlear implant one--where the community itself can be very divided at what they want to happen, and what they want to see happen in fiction.

I consider it my job to listen, particularly to well-reasoned and passionate arguments like yours. But I do need to note that there are arguments on the other side that I do also listen to. And I personally--from all the many things I've read and the time I've spent pondering it--do not currently consider curing of physical aliments with magic to be inherently problematic. I DO consider it to be a difficult issue, and recognize your feelings, which are completely valid. If healing people of disability in the real world is difficult and full of touchy subjects, with a variety of opinions, then it certainly is valid to consider it so in fantasy!

My goal is always to try to depict the varieties of different human experience and opinions. And, indeed, one of my goals with Rysn is to specifically have a character to contrast someone like Lopen--who falls (as you have noted) on a different side of the argument.

But, to be honest, I don't even consider the healing of mental disabilities with magic to be inherently problematic. (Speed of Dark, an excellent science fiction novel, is about a cure for autism--and is done brilliantly.) I do run into a lot of people who really like that I don't let Stormlight heal most mental illness--but I'd say I've run into an equal number of people with depression who wish that I would let it do so, and have told me they'd take a cure for depression without hesitation if one gets invented. (Indeed, there are many who do a great deal to medically to try just this.)

What I would say is that I need to be careful not to present one idea as the only valid response to these sorts of things. You're absolutely right that there is a perspective I need to be careful not to invalidate, and tropes I can be harmful in perpetuating if I don't watch myself. (My sister in law has chronic fatigue, and yeah--the number of people who told her if she was just stronger-willed, she'd get past it, is huge.)

I will be very careful with the Rysn novella. (And we do these days try very hard to have specific readers who have disabilities like the ones I depict. It is my plan to do this here.) And I'll keep your post handy as I revise, as I think it will be helpful.

Thanks for putting yourself out there, and doing all this work, just to help me do better. It's really a great thing for you to have done.

2nd post (I asked him if we would see assistive technology using fabrials, and commented on a poor choice of wording when Hobber is healed that I noticed in my Oathbringer reread.)

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Dawnshard actually has Rysn looking at fabrials and wondering if those could be of use in the way you're indicating here. I think you'll be pleased with the result.

As for the rest of your post, this is a really useful distinction to point out to me. I can see it's all about HOW one approaches it.

I think you'd be a really helpful beta reader, if you happen to be interested. Drop me a DM if you are. Either way, thank you very much for these posts.

3rd post (In response to a post talking about autism and Renarin)

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I have no intention of "curing" Renarin, as I agree with your points here--but I really appreciate you mentioning them. We are aligned on this idea. I used Speed of Dark as an example of how a theoretical cure could be used in a story in a non-problematic way. (In that story, a cure is invented, and the story is entirely about the ramifications of it--and the dangers. It is a highlight of why I think Science Fiction is important. Asking the question, "What if?" before something happens in real life gives us a lot of questions, ideas, and concerns to work on as a society in preparation for such events.)

That said, that is a book that specifically deals with this idea. My intention for the Stormlight Archive, and Renarin specifically, is to explore him as a character. Not to change him into someone else.

In summary, Brandon is great. (Not exactly news, I know.)

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

On 6/26/2020 at 9:42 AM, Claincy said:

@AonEne Thanks. Yeah I'm hopeful. I really think the main reason he hasn't done better so far is that he didn't realise he wasn't hitting the same mark he was with other groups.

 

@thegatorgirl00 I have read Defending Elysium. But I forgot about it when I was writing the letter. Which is silly, because I reread it relatively recently. :/ Ah well. Defending Elysium is a more complicated and interesting one. I think there'd be more varied opinions from different disabled people on it. I reread it again today to try and sort out what I thought of it.

I can't speak for the presentation of blindness with the 'fear of the darkness' thing with any conviction. I really don't know how well that would or wouldn't resonate with someone who'd lost their sight. I'm not very knowledgeable in that regard. Though it's worth noting that the majority of people who are legally blind still have some vision. I'm not sure what someone with partial vision might think of it relative to someone with no vision. Or someone born blind vs someone who became blind. So basically that was a lot of words to say "I really don't know" about the specific case.

I can talk a little more generally though. Disabled people with super powers? More please! Disabled people with super powers that directly replace/remove the limitations of their disability? Ehh, it depends. It mostly depends on the limitations and what the author does with it. In this case, replacing sight with what is essentially a better sight isn't as interesting to me. His Sense doesn't have a lot of downsides and has fewer limitations than regular sight. It can be suppressed, sure. But you can suppress someone's sight with darkness or a blindfold (or overly bright light for that matter), suppressing Cytonics is much harder by comparison. I still like Defending Elysium and I don't dislike Jason being blind or anything, but it doesn't stand out to me personally as an especially praiseworthy representation of disability. Jason's experience just seems too separate from normal blindness.

I think generally I prefer if a character's super powers don't directly replace their disability, or if there are more significant limitations around its use. It makes for more interesting story telling for one thing. But it's also a lot closer to reality, and you aren't going to end up with a character who is technically disabled but it doesn't really effect them much. I don't have a strong idea what most disabled people think along these lines, so I'm just speaking for myself here.

I think a solid real-world example is actually a wheelchair. I know a lot of people who don't need a wheelchair see them as something scary, afraid of being 'confined to a wheelchair'. But that's not the reality at all. To someone who needs one, whether they can walk a little or not at all, a wheelchair is great. It's a mobility aid that can really make a big difference in their life and allow them to be a lot more independent. It does have it's own limitations, of course. A lot of places aren't properly accessible for wheelchairs, plenty of terrain isn't easy to traverse in one, (some strangers like to 'help' push you around even when you tell them not to), etc. You're still better off thinking of them as super-powers for some disabled people than as a bad thing to be 'stuck' having to use.

Gotta ask: how mad were you when Oracle went back to being Batgirl?

Because I was furious, and I’m not disabled. I’d never known her as anything but Oracle, and thought the change cheapened her character tremendously.

 

As an aside, regarding chronic pain: Both Kell and Marsh have this, although it’s quite subtle for the former. Kell’s scars do bother him, and he experiences phantom pains. It’s VERY easy to miss though, since the character naturally tends to ignore it. (Which is completely in character for him.) Marsh is in quite a bit of pain from the moment he becomes an Inquisitor. Saze may have helped this, via a literal act of god.

 

Regarding Spook: I don’t see him as a disabled character at all, actually. Maybe it’s because I’m in the psych field, but I always saw him as more like a drug addict. It was like he was addicted to Tin, always needing to burn it. Even his reasoning fits with many addicts. So Saze didn’t cure his disability so much as he healed the damage from Spook’s Tin addiction, if that makes sense.

However, Harmony did heal all the disabled Scadrians upon his Ascension. I’d probably have been annoyed if it wasn’t so obviously intended to parallel the Revelation at Sinai, where God is said to have done the same. Brandon was clearly trying to go for that resonance, what with the hill covered in flowers and the people’s leader receiving a holy book. So in that particular case it made sense, since those things do all go together in a way that’s supposed to feel familiar to us.

[Frustration he/him]

12 minutes ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

However, Harmony did heal all the disabled Scadrians upon his Ascension. I’d probably have been annoyed if it wasn’t so obviously intended to parallel the Revelation at Sinai, where God is said to have done the same. Brandon was clearly trying to go for that resonance, what with the hill covered in flowers and the people’s leader receiving a holy book. So in that particular case it made sense, since those things do all go together in a way that’s supposed to feel familiar to us.

And the world being reborn, new world, new god, new bodies.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

11 minutes ago, Frustration said:

And the world being reborn, new world, new god, new bodies.

Exactly. He changed them on multiple levels; the healing of disabilities was minor compared to the Kolos, or altering the people’s lungs and digestive tracts. Probably their skin too, though that would have been more minor a thing.

[Claincy he/him]

@Kingsdaughter613 Sorry for the slow reply.

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Gotta ask: how mad were you when Oracle went back to being Batgirl?

I haven't actually read those comics so I don't have a strong opinion on that specifically. But I suspect if I was reading it now I wouldn't exactly be delighted.

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As an aside, regarding chronic pain: Both Kell and Marsh have this, although it’s quite subtle for the former. Kell’s scars do bother him, and he experiences phantom pains. It’s VERY easy to miss though, since the character naturally tends to ignore it. (Which is completely in character for him.) Marsh is in quite a bit of pain from the moment he becomes an Inquisitor. Saze may have helped this, via a literal act of god.

Oh right, yeah I forgot about that. With Kel I think it's more emotional trauma + a desire to itch them than outright pain, the physical pain doesn't seem to really have much of an effect/impact. But still.

Marsh I definitely should have thought of. Reflecting on it now; we don't get to see much of his perspective (or much of him at all really) after being inquisified until HoA when Ruin's complete control takes centre stage. That's not really a complaint, just noting that we don't really get to see him living with his pain or how it might effect him when not being directly controlled by a much more powerful entity.

On 10/21/2020 at 1:22 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Regarding Spook: I don’t see him as a disabled character at all, actually. Maybe it’s because I’m in the psych field, but I always saw him as more like a drug addict. It was like he was addicted to Tin, always needing to burn it. Even his reasoning fits with many addicts. So Saze didn’t cure his disability so much as he healed the damage from Spook’s Tin addiction, if that makes sense.

Spook is more a "has parallels to disability" than "is a disabled character" I think. I don't think hypersensitivity comes up much in media, but it certainly can be a major difficulty. Here it's taken more as a part of a super power, or turned into one. I thought it was worth mentioning the connection, but yeah, I'd hesitate to firmly call him a disabled character.

On 10/21/2020 at 1:22 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

However, Harmony did heal all the disabled Scadrians upon his Ascension. I’d probably have been annoyed if it wasn’t so obviously intended to parallel the Revelation at Sinai, where God is said to have done the same. Brandon was clearly trying to go for that resonance, what with the hill covered in flowers and the people’s leader receiving a holy book. So in that particular case it made sense, since those things do all go together in a way that’s supposed to feel familiar to us.

I had completely forgotten about that. That's..hrm. I see *why* and I can see Sazed doing that. But any time you get a setting or situation where you remove all disability, whether through technology or magic, that's...yeah. Not a huge fan. On a more practical consideration, if you have a group of people rebuilding society from the ground up following an apocalypse and none of them are at all disabled that would likely lead to a society even less accessible and more ableist than our own. Not intentionally of course. But if the foundation & default assumption is of a complete lack of disability, I think that's highly unlikely to turn out well for future disabled people.

[jamesbondsmith He/him]

For context: I trained in martial arts for 18 years but quit because injuries were piling up (residual pain from a knee reconstruction and simultaneous issues with feet, shoulders and elbows). I'm more on the chronic pain end of the spectrum than an actual disability, but I have noticed that in stories which include a powerful magic system severe injuries are completely healed pretty quickly.

Kaladin is healed in WoR, Lopen gets a whole new limb, even the Elantrians who suffer from chronic pain suddenly get better. It's gotten to the point where the questions of 'who will die next' make me think of someone like Adolin getting injured but without dying or being healed.

I didn't notice it too much beforehand, but I've been seeing it more and more since I read the latest Dresden Files books (spoilers for all of them)

Spoiler

Murphy's disability was just terribly handled. We could have seen so much more of her dealing with the ramifications of her injuries, but she just gets too hung up on it and makes the boneheaded decision of the century to go into the battle of Chicago. Then she dies, and doesn't even get the dignity of being taken out by her own moronic choice.
We've seen wizards who will explicitly recover from paraplegia given enough time, and even Michael's rehab is skipped over (not to mention the literal guardian angels watching over him), but our first non-magical person getting horrifically injured is fridged.

I'm debating whether to go back to uni, and the treatment of physical disability in high-magic fantasy is starting to look like a decent PhD topic.

[Lunamor she/her]

On 7/10/2020 at 8:36 AM, Scriptorian said:

Good discussion here.
I’m currently writing a book where the magic system is directly linked to the characters’ disabilities. So, needless to say, I am very interested in discussions of disabilities in fiction, especially when they mingle with magic systems.
The basic premise of my magic system is that every character with a power has some kind of associated psychological/neurological disability. In-universe, they aren’t sure if the powers cause the disability, or if a preexisting disability is what let’s you develope powers (read and find out  ). Regardless, all powers have the built-in drawback of supernaturally aggravating one’s disability when overused. Also, the powers and disabilities tend to be thematically linked. This leads to interesting interactions.
The general rule I’m operating under is that while some characters can sidestep their disability through use of their power, it’s usually short-term and there’s always a cost. For example, one character can manipulate sound but has aural hypersensitivity. He can theoretically avoid his usual problems with sensory overload by lowering the volume of all sound around him, but doing so leaves him even more sensitive afterwards.
Things get even more sticky when different people’s powers start interacting with each other (like, for example, someone who can manipulate emotions meets someone with depression). So I’m having a fun time trying to allow characters to develop organically, and the magic system to interact realistically with their disabilities, all while maintaining sensitivity to real peoples’ experiences.
I’m also planning a deconstruction of what happens when a character's life-long disability does get essentially resolved by the magic system. (Spoiler alert: there will be angst)

TLDR: if my book ever gets close to publishing, I’m going to need all the sensitivity readers. (I'm almost halfway through the first draft. Woot.)

This is really late, but if you need someone to answer questions about the disabilities you mentioned I’d be more than happy to help, I have both depression and a hypersensitivity to sound.